


Knight and Mourning

by Darth_Nonie



Category: Batman (Comics), Identity Crisis (DC)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Atonement - Freeform, Dark, Implied First Time, Implied Sexual Content, Implied Slash, M/M, Punishment, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-01
Updated: 2005-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-11 19:23:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2080200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darth_Nonie/pseuds/Darth_Nonie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SPOILERS for "Identity Crisis."</p><p>Summary: None of the Bat family ever dealt well with grief</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knight and Mourning

Dick had to do something.

Three days, and Tim still wasn't answering his phone.

Three days since Tim's father died.

Three days since Tim had run, too late, to crouch wailing in his father's blood, Robin suit torn off behind him in desperate and useless guilt like a failed bargain with fate. And Batman following with merciless love to enfold him forever into the shadow of the Bat.

Dick had talked Alfred into sending him the suit-camera footage from both of them.

He didn't want to talk to Bruce. 

Tim's father was dead. And Batman, with his usual warmth and emotional skills, was probably locked into his own iron denial, and no help to Tim at all.

God, Dick thought, is there a curse? Batkids and their fathers. Their parents. 

He remembered the gut-blow of grief, the immense silence all around him, the vast shapeless anger as he looked down at their bodies in the circus ring, and then those dark arms holding him and it wasn't enough, could never be enough, and never would.

And Bruce, Jesus, who could even guess how much he had hurt? Mother and father both, like Dick, but Bruce somehow sure it was his own fault, and no preparation at all, no sense that it could ever happen.

Circus fliers, at least you knew and made yourself not know. That shadow is what gives flying all its power and brightness, that dark terror underneath. Had young Bruce ever imagined his own father dying of--what? Contagion from a patient? But surely not his father and mother at once like that, a blow from nowhere.

But you couldn't compare this kind of grief. It was absolute. His. And Bruce's. And the kid's. 

Tim's.

Leslie held young Bruce later, she'd told him. And Alfred kept him focused on life. And for Dick, there was Bruce and Batman and the new secret to keep.

But Tim? Nobody but Bruce, and the old man was stone these days, stone since Jason's death; colder even than when he'd fired Dick. So cold you burned your hand trying to touch. Who was there for Tim?

He'd be at the Manor. The news said he was unharmed, so Bruce wouldn't leave him to some brightly lit hospital and the casual warmth of strangers. No, Tim would be huddled in his room, in the dark, alone, because if Bruce softened up enough to be there for him, Bruce would break.

Damn it, enough. Dick had to go to him. Get the bike.

The road. At least it wasn't rush hour.

\-----

Gotham. 

The Wayne estate. The *stately* Wayne estate, the stately state of the stately estate in the state that stated--

Dick didn't bother with the front door. The tunnel, the cave, the steps, the clock, and up. He thought he'd find Bruce in the cave staring at his screen, cold iron, but no, the bastard probably just went out and left the kid alone.

So Dick went straight to the kid's room, and the door wasn't even closed and--

And--

And--

And how long had he been standing here--

Bruce. He recognized the Croc-bite scars on the man's shoulder, the bullet dent in his naked hip, before he let himself see the rest, see the small hand and the sliver of Tim's face almost buried under the monstrous bulk and weight of him. 

Dick almost wanted to see their slumped bodies as dead, anything but this, but Bruce was breathing and still there and so the kid must be breathing too.

No point in lying to himself that he couldn't smell the sex, nor the blood on the long leather belt that still trailed from Bruce's hand. The thin arcs of blood across the torn sheets, the wall. The welt obscenely red on the back of Tim's hand, and the certainty of others hidden beneath Batman's punishing weight.

Bruce didn't raise his head, his voice a dry ghost. "Dick. He--wouldn't stop screaming. He wouldn't stop. Said it was. His fault. He. I."

And Dick still wanted to misunderstand, get angry for the kid's sake, but the little bruised hand clutched at Batman, held to him desperately, and Dick swallowed.

He-- Dick told himself he could react to this later, think about it later, but right now he had to stop just standing here staring.

He knew that when he could really think again, this would break him; break all of them. 

He'd never be able to forget seeing this, and they-- O God--

He wanted to be sick.

How would any of them ever--

How could they--

But right now he couldn't regain that moral focus. 

Right now he himself was the obscenity in the closeness of this room, the armored outsider grating against the raw flayed naked hearts in front of him.

It was already too much, and he could see Bruce's spine start to tighten as he watched. So he did the only thing that made sense to him, stripping out of his own control and baring his unforgotten grief and rage and utter loneliness so he could join them.

Clothes were irrelevant, but it seemed--friendlier--to remove them.

He pressed one palm down firmly on Bruce's back, there where the tremor was starting, and with the other hand he pulled the belt from Bruce's slack grip. "Tim?" he murmured, but those small fingers waved the question back at him.

Refusing to think, Dick wrapped the free end around his hand once, twice. Bruce would need him to use the buckle.


End file.
